Captain’s Log 9.21.2018 : Striving

Today, I’m feeling a shift in the air. I recently did an evaluation of the work we have left to do on Chapter 01 to get it ready for Launch (capital L intentional), and I did what I do best: I made a spreadsheet. This kind of task management is at the core of Agile game design. We estimated the time it would take to do each task and divvied them up among the teammates. With this, I was able to make a ballpark guesstimate at when we might be finished. This is very exciting, and although I won’t share those dates with you because I don’t want to end up disappointing anyone if we don’t hit our goals, the team is now starting to ramp up with the mindful intent of actually getting our game out of the nest!

In indie game design, the more things change, the more things change. We’ve been working on “Danika Dire” for over five years, making slow but steady progress, with the one constant being: change. I know, it’s a cliché, but it’s also Truth.

Being flexible, being “agile” (as they say in the games industry) is critical to successful indie game design. The Games Omniverse team has lived through character redesigns, strategy shifts, marriages, surgery, job losses, family member deaths, and so many other game-changing events. Some of these have caused us to lose teammates. Most have brought us all closer together.

Pushing Through

It’s my job to keep things moving, progressing, and on an even keel. I knew early on that this would be a long journey, and I mentally and emotionally prepared myself for that. I originally thought it would be harder to maintain momentum over the long term, but I find that my team inspires me. Our passion for the game and vision of the future is contagious. They keep showing up, and so I do too!

There’ve been plenty of times when I’ve asked myself what I was doing, why I am spending so much of my own money, loading my credit cards in lean times and paying them off in flush times, when I could be saving for comfortable retirement. I’ll go more into this in a future post, but the bottom line is that I am investing in my future, my future with this group of wonderful people with whom I hope to work closely for the rest of my life. We’re making a game, one I sincerely hope you love, but even if you don’t, WE ARE MAKING A GAME!! For me, life doesn’t get any better than this.

I can only assume that my team feels the same about the vision of a future in which we continue making games together, and so I keep this going for them as much as, if not more than, for myself. Sometimes I push them. More often, I push myself. And they push themselves. Together, we strive.